Greenpeace pilot brings heat pumps and solar to Ukrainian community
pveurope.eu36 points by doener 4 hours ago
36 points by doener 4 hours ago
The problem is that they're useless during winter in Ukrain. There is barely any energy generated between November and March. And heatpump won't work during frequent outages. Nice but kinda useless gesture
What's the best option? Diesel heaters? Firewood / wood stoves? Probably they are things Greenpeace doesn't like.
Heat pumps work fine on batteries. The better solution is extensive battery storage and (intermittent) grid power, under the circumstances.
They mention large hot water stores which are cheaper and simpler than batteries for storing heat, at least for now.
If they were serious about helping us, they would bring boiler, turbine, and transformer parts.
> The project, underway since the end of 2023, is focused on the renovation and energy upgrade of a five-storey, 60-apartment block. [..] Heat pumps and solar energy now supply a large residential building in full, a first for Ukraine. Böhling urges: “Solutions like this should be prioritised over gas heating in EU-funded reconstruction.”
Not the first. I don't think some people realise this, but Ukraine is a country with highly-modernised, strong, and well spread-out industrial base. This is why it took the invaders three whole years to seriously damage our TEC onfrastructure to the point it cannot be repaired in a timely manner. And most new apartment blocks are built with heat pumps, geothermal anyway. Some smaller ones (such as the 5-story one they're taking about) were being retrofitted by housing cooperatives due to favourable economics of it. We are not third-world; most existing apartment blocks in all major cities are largely reliant on vast, redundant TEC infrastructure for power distribution and centralised heating. THAT is a solved problem.
What we need is more air defense platforms and replacement parts that we cannot easily manufacture, in numbers.
Green Planet Energy, have been greenwashing fossil gas, especially russian gas, for years.
My first thought was "Greenpeace, the fossil fuel mouthpiece that killed the nuclear industry?"
I'm not sure why I'd care about news related to them that wasn't their dismantling.
Greenpeace got their start against nuclear weapons and nuclear waste dumping at sea.
I don't think it's entirely appropriate to ignore the risks of nuclear in the country that contains Chernobyl, and another different nuclear plant which is quite close to the front lines and was shut down by capture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zaporizhzhia_Nuclear_Power_Pla...
How solar can help Ukraine now? When there weather is foggy, cloudy? How heap pump can help if there are electricity outages?
These guys...
after decades of destroying nuclear, German energy independence and thus pegging German energy sourcing to Russian pipelines, resulting in the geopolitical mess we and Ukraine are in – to have the gall to even pretend they're doing any good here...
What are you talking about? Germany would be more energy independent if it had adopted solar and wind power when Greenpeace was advocating it fourty years ago, like China is showcasing today!
The question is not if renewables can replace nuclear. Obviously it is technically possible. The question is how many times bigger should be installed peak power of renewables. 20x? 50x? And of course if it’s economically viable. Because China does not gamble with renewables. They build nuclear capacity at unprecedented levels.
They would depend on china instead of Russia. huge improvement! /s
There is a significant difference in term of dependency when it comes to solar vs gas/oil. Solar panels are not consumables when int comes to energy production- oil and gas are. China can shutdown the supply of solar panels, but not the energy generation with existing panels. This gives you time to start building other supply channels.
Solar seems vulnerable in a war.
Compared to what? Gas, nuclear and hydro seem even more vulnerable.
Off grid people ~dont heat off solar. They use hydrocarbons for heat sources. Or wood.
Heat vastly increases solar generation and battery demand.
Most of rural Ukraine already uses or can use solid fuel (firewood, coal) for heating. The article is about flats, not off-grid houses.
Solar + battery helps against shorter blackouts, to at least keep your freezer and fridge running. All while they repair the grid.
If you have solar on your roof and a bomb hits it, you have no power. And no roof. Power is the least of your problems.
If you have a central power nuclear/gas/coal station and a bomb hits it, nobody has power.
> If you have a central power nuclear/gas/coal station and a bomb hits it, nobody has power.
if that happens it can be repaired more economically and faster – as has been repeatedly shown in Ukraine.
I think we need to look harder at the concept of survivor bias and what it doesn't mean for future chance if anyone believes Ukraine nuclear power stations suffering damage as routinely as any other physical asset would have been OK.